How Stereotypes Are Born

February 17, 2014

"Brazil is not a serious country," French statesman Charles de Gaulle allegedly once said. The insult would continue to haunt the country for decades to come, and has become the kind of foreigner's mentality that Brazilians have come to loath and expect. And it's the type of outlook that looks likely to come from both the foreign media and international tourists during the World Cup.

By the same token, some in Brazil already expect the worst about what others will think of their homeland. Brazilians suffer from what playwright Nelson Rodrigues dubbed the "complexo de vira-lata," or the mutt complex. Rodrigues coined the term after the 1950 World Cup, which was held in Brazil and ended in the country's devastating loss to Uruguay during the final game. Rodrigues wrote that this complex is "the inferiority in which Brazilians voluntarily place themselves in front of the rest of the world." "The problem is faith in oneself," he said.

It's important to take stock of these concepts, because while they're not unique to the World Cup, they're something that foreigners should be aware of and sensitive to. Plus, they create something of a vicious cycle.

Some international outlets may be painting a grim picture of Brazil ahead of the World Cup, but it's important to keep an open mind when you're visiting Brazil or doing business there. Just because things aren't guaranteed to be perfect doesn't mean foreigners should diminish the country entirely. By the same token, those doing business there, particularly public figures, should put effort into researching at least some basics about the country, the same effort they'd afford for countries like China or Russia.

The World Cup has brought these issues to the fore. Examples abound, whether it's FIFA calling into question whether Curitiba and Cuiabá will stay on as host cities, or a cover article of a French magazine allegedly detailing all of the things wrong with Brazil (though apparently, the text circulating on social media may not be quite as bad as what actually appeared in the magazine). Or it's the fear-mongering from foreign tabloids that make the country seem too scary to visit for the World Cup. Meanwhile, on the Brazilian side, you'll often hear the term "padrão FIFA," or FIFA standards, to describe what the organization is demanding of the country, as if nothing Brazil would produce on its own would be up to snuff.

That said, I don't think Brazil's alone in the mutt complex nor the overly critical view from foreigners. Take Russia, for example. The Winter Olympics have provided a sort of preview of what to expect from foreigners during Brazil's mega-events, with lots of complaints from journalists about their hotels and the emergence of the meme Sochi Problems, documenting both real and fake problems in the Olympic city.

Still, there was one interesting exception to the Russian Olympics media coverage: NBC hired The New Yorker's David Remnick, a Russia expert, to give historical and cultural context during the opening ceremony, as well as during select spots throughout the games. It made me wonder: will they do that sort of thing for Rio in 2016? Or will they not consider Brazil complex or intellectually stimulating enough for that sort of treatment?

When it comes to the "Brazil is not a serious country" and the mutt complex, I give you three recent examples, so you can keep your eye out for these types of issues. I've written about this before and I probably will again, so feel free to share examples you find.

At the end of January, Huffington Post launched the Brasil Post, a major media venture. In the lead-up to the launch, Arianna Huffington was tweeting about Brazil to drum up interest. She quoted author Paulo Coelho, twice, perhaps not learning from U.S. President Barack Obama's mistake in citing the Brazilian icon, who is more of a pop culture figure than say, your Brazilian Mark Twain or Ernest Hemingway. She also quoted football star Pelé, noted that Brazil has the world's most surfers per capita, and explained that Brazil has the second largest fitness industry globally. These fluffy tweets were evidence that the media mogul hadn't put much effort into researching Brazil, nor publicly gave it the due it deserves.

American billionaire Donald Trump is building his first construction project in Rio, including a hotel and office space. In a recent interview with VEJA magazine, Trump was asked if he'd ever met with Dilma Rousseff. "No. Who is he?" Trump responded. "What about Lula, have you ever heard of him?" the journalist asked. Another no. While Trump isn't exactly known for his intellectual prowess, it's surprising that an international businessman wouldn't know that small bit of information.

On February 15, Apple opened its first ever official store in Latin America, in Rio's Village Mall. The opening drew around 2,000 people, who sang a popular football song that goes "I'm Brazilian with a lot of pride and love." Staff unfurled a large Brazilian flag before doing a countdown to open the store. (The prices will still be incredibly expensive, though the store offers a 10 percent discount for purchases paid in cash or in full.) Amid the fanfare, people were throwing around the phrase "padrão Apple," or Apple standards, as if Apple had put its stamp of approval on the country.

July 29, 2012

Brazilian culture is enjoying growing popularity in the United States, with everything from music to video games, from Neymar to cachaça. In some cases, they aren't positive or accurate visions of Brazilian culture, so it's something of a mixed blessing to see Brazil becoming increasingly visible stateside.

Beginning in May, Max Payne 3 brought gritty visions of São Paulo to gamers in the U.S. and all over the world. While it glorifies the violence often featured in other forms of entertainment about Brazil, it also had a surprising attention to detail, ranging from loads of Portuguese with native speakers to real Brazilian designer furniture in a penthouse scene.

The same month, Macy's began a huge Brazil campaign nationwide, featuring both Brazilian products and designers as well as Brazil-inspired products from international brands. Apex, Brazil's export promotion agency, partnered with Macy's on the project. The flagship store in New York designed parts of the store to "look like" Brazil, including a Rio-style calcadão. Stores sold everything from cashews and Guaraná to Natura hand creams and fitas do Bomfim. Lots of products and clothes featured bright colors with "tropical" themes, and language around the campaign used words like "sensual" and "exotic." Nevertheless, the campaign put Brazil in the spotlight in one of the biggest retail chains in the country, and for the past few months, Brazil-themed Macy's shopping bags were ubiquitous throughout New York.

Indeed, Brazil is especially big in New York this summer. The Brazilian national soccer team played Argentina at the Metlife Stadium in June to a nearly sold-out crowd. In a single week in July, the New York Times featured two separate stories on Brazilian culture: a profile on soccer star Neymar and a feature on cachaça. In July, there was even a Broadway musical about Rio featured at a local festival, as well as a Nelson Rodrigues play for a short run. Everywhere you look, Brazilian keratin and blowout treatments are popping up around the city.

Brazilian music in particular has had a good run this summer. This month, an annual music festival at Lincoln Center dedicated a night to two forró bands, which were also featured in the New York Times. The event brought Brazilians, Brazilophiles, and curious New Yorkers alike to dance to the Northeastern beats. Brasil Summerfest returned for a second year, with a week of Brazilian shows including a big performance by Criolo in Central Park. And Michel Teló is now in the top 10 of the top 25 Latin songs in the U.S., with "Ai se eu te pego" continuing to spread among all audiences.

February 01, 2012

Something that drives some Brazilians and Brazil observers crazy is the international media's tendency to constant relate Brazil's misfortunes to the upcoming World Cup and Olympics. After three buildings collapsed in Rio last week, likely due to illegal construction in one of the buildings, one of the most prevalent messages throughout the English-language coverage of the tragedy was relating the events to Brazil's preparedness for the international events. Not about Brazil's building codes, or construction laws, or safety regulations (luckily, some people did cover those issues, as you'll see shortly, and there are still plenty of talented journalists providing great coverage of Brazil), but just the basics of the aftermath and why the tragedy reflects poorly on Brazil's upcoming events. Just search for terms related to the building collapse with Olympics or World Cup and you'll find dozens of results. It's not that they're completely off target; some of the articles are thoughtful and sensible, like this one from the Christian Science Monitor, which delves into some of the important issues about construction. But it makes you wonder if journalists are legitimately connecting current events to the Olympics, or if the editorial directive is to make that connection in order to inspire interest in readers.

It's not as if there has been a shortage of tragic events in Rio in particular; as Julia Michaels explains on Rio Real Blog, "In the last year Rio has seen exploding manhole covers, trolley, ferry and bus accidents, metro stoppages and electrical blackouts, among other catastrophes." She also went on to discuss the background of what happened, and why it could theoretically happen again, and why it's a serious issue for the city. But in the mainstream media, the imperative seems to be to connect any negative news events in Brazil to the World Cup and Olympics. To give you an idea of how pervasive this narrative has become, my grandmother brought it up of her own accord over the holidays, mentioning she'd been reading and hearing about it on the news.

The same types of speculations were made about South Africa before the World Cup, wondering if they would be ready in time. Things worked out fine, in the end, and they likely will in Brazil, too, even if things wrap up at the last minute or if certain projects have to be abandoned. The more important questions, of whether all of the preparations for the events will benefit Brazil, or if rushing to finish projects for the events will negatively impact the country (as in, buildings collapsing out of thin air), are discussed infrequently outside of Brazil in the mainstream media. It begs to question: once 2016 rolls around, will anyone want to cover Brazil anymore? Without the big international events to constantly peg news to, will readers and viewers care? Or will Brazil gradually lose space in the international press, particularly in the English-language press? It even makes me wonder if they'll pull correspondents after the Olympics wrap up--it seems possible, sadly, despite Brazil's continually growing global importance.

It's possible another tactic to take will be on that some outlets already use: constantly mixing inappropriate references to stereotypical aspects of Brazilian culture to serious news pieces. It's something I've written about before, and is an unfortunate ongoing trend. In some articles, it seems difficult for outsiders to treat Brazil as they would a developed country, constantly needing to throw in some banal reference to samba or bikinis. Two recent examples: a comprehensive BBC article about the Brazilian economy, an excellent piece that was trivialized presumably by an editor who decided on the title: "Brazil's economy marches to a samba beat." There was also an otherwise insightful Wall Street Journal article about start ups in Brazil, but included an unrelated photo of a Carnival dancer (with a caption making a tenuous connection to the article) and this paragraph:

"Obviously, as everyone says, Brazil is the next China—it's now the sixth-largest economy in the world. 'The not-obvious part,' Julio Vasconcellos, cofounder and chief executive of Peixe Urbano, told me, 'is there is a ton of opportunity here and very few people taking advantage of it.' Why isn't every sunny young Brazilian with a tech idea taking the leap? Because, beyond the thongs, they've got issues. (Who doesn't?)."

It may seem trivial to point out this kind of framing of Brazil, but as I've written before, I do think it makes a difference in the long run of how foreigners perceive, and consequently interact with Brazil. It also helps perpetuate the complexo de vira-lata, as aptly mentioned in the WSJ article. The World Cup and Olympics actually can provide a break from this type of stereotypical and sometimes inappropriate framing of Brazil, even if mentioning the events isn't always warranted. But it does make me wonder what Brazil's "hook" will be in the international media after 2016. I guess we can expect a lot more samba references.

Before the premiere, there was a press conference that seemed to go pretty well...until they let Jamie Foxx talk:

When I first read about the ridiculous comment, I wasn't surprised, but I figured a PR person would warn him that it wasn't the best tactic to take and to cut it out. But at the premiere, American reporters were no help:

I know I sound like a broken record, but I can't stress enough what a spectacularly stupid idea it is to perpetuate sexual stereotypes about Brazilian women, particularly when you are trying to do PR in Brazil. It makes you look bad, and by proxy, whatever you're trying to promote, and it can really irritate people. Anne Hathaway's approach was much more the way to go. Anyway.

The movie has had mixed reviews so far from the Brazilian press; G1 was fairly effusive, but an O Dia review complained the movie had lots of clichés, like scenes of Carnival and thieves robbing tourists, and likened the movie to Zé Carioca films. Still, I can't wait to see it.

November 08, 2010

There's a definite danger when Hollywood portrays Brazil in popular foreign TV shows or film, a sobering reality that many Brazilians are already well aware of. It's amazing how seemingly innocent mistakes or a lack of attention to detail can perpetuate stereotypes not only in countries around the world, but even from generation to generation.

There hasn't really been a big Brazil-centered gringo movie in awhile; the last one that comes to mind is the ridiculously stupid and very controversial Turistas (and I guess that stupid Stallone movie). But the next two years promise more than a few Hollywood movies that take place in Brazil, including the much anticipated animated film Rio 3D, amongst others.

This past week, two different films were shot in Rio de Janeiro. The Fast and the Furious Five production flew the stars to Brazil to film a few scenes in the Cidade Maravilhosa, allowing the actors to also hang out on the beach and mingle with locals. Though it was a big deal in the local media (especially since Vin Diesel in particular was incredibly friendly and a gracious guest, despite some blips), it turned out that despite the fact that most of the movie is supposed to take place in Rio, the majority of the movie was shot in Puerto Rico, due to high production costs in Brazil. So if you actually see the movie, don't be surprised if a lot of the scenes look unfamiliar, since only a small portion of the film was shot in Rio. Let's just hope some of the Brazilian characters don't speak Spanish.

But there was an even bigger deal with Hollywood in Brazil this week. The Breaking Dawn duo landed in Rio on Friday and made headlines across the country. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson flew down with a production crew, and even the original writer Stephanie Meyer, to shoot a few scenes in the city and then a few scenes in Paraty. Despite earlier misgivings about making the trip to Brazil, the director and producers finally agreed to send the two stars to film in the actual honeymoon location from the book. The director also made sure (and was very wise to do so) to say nice things about Rio and how the cast and crew felt safe in the city and were happy about their warm reception. But the decision wasn't all that simple. The Brazilian film distribution company RioFilme, which is run by the city government, paid US$500,000 (R$850,000) for the US production to shoot in Rio, and had been heavily lobbying the film studio to come to Brazil for months. Luckily, the short Brazil-based shooting supposedly should bring in around US$3 million in revenue for the city and create around 500 jobs.

Hopefully, the two movies won't create controversy when they come out because of the stereotypes they portray, but there's a chance they might. I recently watched the full episode of the Rio Simpsons episodes for the first time, since it's one of the most controversial portrayals of Brazil to come out of Hollywood in recent years (right up there with Turistas). At the time, Brazilians were up in arms for the crazy stereotypes and inaccuracies in the episode, and Riotur, the tourism bureau for Rio de Janeiro, threatened to sue Fox (though in the end, nothing happened). Here's an interesting piece on the incident from NPR:

One of my favorite lines from the Rio episode is when Marge, in a an outdoor market, marvels, "Everything here is something!" Isn't it, though?

While it was a ridiculous portrayal of Brazil, it was also really funny, with a clear eye for detail, which indicated to me that one or more of the writers had been to Rio. And it was clearly a parody, which is what the Simpsons is all about, unlike the aforementioned dramatic movies due to come out soon. While some argue that with comedy, Brazilians should learn to laugh at themselves more, it's a lot harder to be forgiving with a "serious" movie, especially a blockbuster like the Twilight Saga.

Hopefully the Breaking Dawn people will take a note from the Simpsons affair and try to stick as much to reality as possible and avoid some of the silly stereotypes that are even in the book (though it would be fun to see Robert Pattinson speaking Portuguese though; in the book, his character speaks it fluently, because he's awesome like that). It's a thrill for some Brazilians to see their country showcased in such a big movie, but they won't be forgiving if the writers get a little too creative with the realistic parts of the plot.

October 25, 2010

I'm very much in debt to Ana, from the Rio Gringa Facebook group, for sending me this amazing documentary called Olhar Estrangeiro. While the title on the video was translated as "The Foreign Eye," I think a better translation would be "Through a Foreigner's Eyes."

A Brazilian filmmaker, fed up with the ridiculous stereotypes foreigners have of Brazil, set out on a mission to discover the origins of these cultural misconceptions, tracing them to Hollywood, European cinema and beyond. She based the movie on a book called O Brasil dos Gringos, (note to self: find this book), which studies Brazilian cliches in foreign films. In a way, this documentary justifies all of my griping about stereotypes, because you'd be amazed how just a few movies - even ones that many young people haven't even seen - have shaped people's visions of an entire country.

The film, which is a mixture of English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, covers the main stereotypes: beautiful women, hypersexuality and sensuality, African and indigenous influences, party culture, the Amazon, and Carnival. Though the movie seemingly sets out to show just how uninformed so many foreign filmmakers and actors are, there's a few surprising characters who are not only more informed, but are actually fluent in Portuguese. Also, Michael Caine is great fun to watch talking about Brazil.

July 25, 2010

Last week, Sylvester Stallone made headlines in Brazil after a panel at Comic-Con, discussing his new movie The Expendibles, parts of which were shot in Rio de Janeiro and possibly other parts of Brazil. Making light of the lax attitude Cariocas had toward filming, BOPE, and the security situation, Stallone really, really pissed off quite a few Brazilians.

"You can shoot people and blow things up and they say, ‘Thank you! Take a monkey home with you!’ We couldn’t have pulled off what we did [somewhere else]. We blew up huge plots of land. It was like, Everybody bring their hot dogs. We’re having a BBQ today. We’re gonna blow up this village.”

He also went on to emphasize that they needed a crew of 70 security guards because of the unsafe situation where they filmed in Rio, and made snarky comments about the BOPE skull and crossbones symbol, saying "Imagine if the LAPD used that!"

The reaction was swift and to anyone who knows Brazil, completely expected. Brazilian Twitter users pushed the term "Cala boca, Sylvester Stallone" (Shut up, Sylvester Stallone) to the top of the trending topics, and the event made news in most major news outlets. (I admit I had to laugh when Globo labeled his comments as "politically incorrect," since Globo knows so much about political incorrectness). Someone with half a brain at the movie studio realized how big of a faux pas Stallone's comments had become, and he quickly issued an apology, alleging his love and respect of Brazil and claiming he'd even recommended that other Americans film there.

There are a couple of issues at play here, ones that an intelligent PR person would have looked into in anticipation of questions about filming in Brazil.

1. Sylvester Stallone is an idiot. He clearly needs to be fed some of his lines ahead of time, even for publicity events. This really should not be news to anyone.

2. Brazilians are extremely sensitive to criticism, regardless of whether the comments are true or not. If you want to avoid a small scandal when doing Brazil-related PR, it's best to avoid anything that could remotely be considered negative or offensive. It's especially bad when a foreign celebrity makes publicly negative comments about Brazil, because it reinforces stereotypes and also perpetuates the inferiority complex that many Brazilians still continue to harbor.

3. While his comments were obnoxious to begin with, Stallone made the epic mistake of including the word "monkey" in his misguided response. While he literally meant a pet monkey, the word for monkey in Portuguese, "macaco," is also an extremely offensive racial epithet. While he didn't mean to use the word that way, it definitely made things worse.

While Stallone's comments were certainly made in an offensive way, there was truth to them: famous gringos are treated with nearly total deference in Brazil (in Rio, especially), and are often given free reign to do whatever they want. Rio is a violent city, and wealthy visitors often hire some form of security when traveling there; few outsiders go into favelas without knowing someone who lives or works there. BOPE exists because of the pervasive violence, which has become something of a fact of life. And plenty of Brazilians do love hot dogs and a good churrasco.

Still, while many people were offended, there were others who shrugged and said, "So what?" (Personally, I think this is a healthy attitude to have, especially in reference to the opinions of someone like Sylvester Stallone) Plus, action movies are really big in Brazil, and it's fairly likely Stallone's new movie will do well there despite this incident.

Overall, the main lesson this little episode offers is: when doing any kind of marketing related to Brazil, tread lightly and be prepared, or you may find yourself with your foot firmly wedged in your mouth, figuratively speaking.